Peer Review

IDentifEYE Workshop - Instructor's Manual

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Reviewed:: Jan 24, 2016 by Teacher Education

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Overview:: The overall aim of the IDentifEYE project is to enhance student online safety by empowering student online resilience. But, you will not instruct students. You will instruct teachers. The reason for this is scalability. In order to reach students in a scalable, structured way there are only two gateways: parents and teachers. Because teachers are organized and have a far larger reach than parents they are the ones you will deal with.
This instructor’s manual is directed at teacher educators who will train teachers to use the IDentifEYE online game to help open dialogue about online identity and safety. Six workshops are outlined, five of which are presented to the teachers by the teacher educators. The first two sessions center on best practices. The third and fourth sessions center on creating lesson plans. In the fifth, the teacher participants implement their lesson plans and in the sixth the teacher educator follows up on that lesson. The manual encourages the teacher educator to push through the likely negative pushback from teachers tasked with yet another duty. The manual consists of the following elements: -A theoretical background to the workshop age differentiation; -Overviews of the workshop session per age group; -Instructor background information; -Instructor practical documents; -Workshop documents; -Project information.
Type of Material:: Workshop and Training Material
Recommended Uses:: • Training of the teachers occurs outside of class. • Training focuses on teachers at the middle school level. There are two versions of the game (e.g., one for 8-11 year olds, and one for 12-14 year olds).
Technical Requirements:: Adobe PDF reader, internet connection to access pdf
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Users of this manual should be able to: 1. Understand and identify key elements of (online) identities and a critical view on globalized society – interactive didactics, elements of prophylactics and new technologies (in particular to Augmented Reality) 2. Identify and implement good practices for teachers to apply knowledge of identities, interactive didactics and prophylactics 3. Present information and train teachers in the above as well as in an Augmented reality game. 4. Evaluate lesson plans and implementation of those plans by the teachers you train.
Target Student Population:: Teachers. Although these materials were constructed for teachers in Greece, Poland, Spain and UK they can be used by any group who speaks the languages. The material is suitable for middle school teachers who use technology, especially with an online presence or with online activities.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Users of this manual should be familiar with professional development and teacher education practices and strategies. Also helpful is a familiarity with technology, lesson plans, the context of middle school environment, education, and student population (as well as challenges). To play the game, you need a webcam and must install Silverlight. There can be problems when using the Chrome browser.

Content Quality

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Strengths:: • This user manual is very thorough. • Online presence and activities are not new. However, how students use their time online and understand their use and place in the online world is still unknown – adding an element of risk to the practice. This manual helps to spur an investigation into a lesson on these elements that can then produce interesting and useful data in the field.
Concerns:: • The length and sometimes overly expressive/descriptive nature of the text within makes it difficult to quickly identify important elements. Some clear summaries and bullet points are needed. • This manual is very prescribed and aimed at a particular tool, making its use fixed.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

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Strengths:: • This manual provides clear learning objectives for the teachers who will be implementing the use of the game in the classroom. • The prescribed nature of the manual makes it easy to implement in a real-world training scenario. • The manual gives clear rubrics for student learning outcomes.
Concerns:: • The manual and the training period for the teachers are lengthy, potentially leading to even more pushback from teachers than is identified in the manual already.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

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Strengths:: • This manual is well thought out and thorough. • Instructions are detailed and specific. The materials are available in English, Greek, Polish, Spanish and Lithuanian. The materials have been field tested. The game does require additional software, Silverlight, to be installed.
Concerns:: • Overly verbose descriptions make the manual difficult to read and follow at times. • Layout of manual is slightly confusing. For example, a lengthy introduction preceding the table of contents makes it unclear where the introductory fit into the rest of the manual. • It would take longer than necessary to implement the instructions of the manual because of the way in which the information is presented.

Other Issues and Comments:: • While the learning object presented for review was the manual, the reviewers could not find a functioning site that presented the game that this manual is based on. This game may no longer be available or in use.
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